Ask 10 barbecue aficionados how to cook a perfect brisket, and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Mention pellet grills, wrapping, or whether to sauce before or after, and there’s a good chance you’ll accidentally start a friendly argument before the coals are even hot.
That’s part of the barbecue charm. It’s rooted in tradition, shaped by geography and fueled by strong opinions. Every pitmaster has a favorite wood, a preferred rub or a technique they’ve spent years perfecting. Some wrap briskets in butcher paper; others swear by foil. Some spritz every hour; others won’t even crack open the smoker until it’s time to pull the meat.
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With the opportunity to speak with several of the country’s top pitmasters during the renowned Carolina BBQ Festival, we realized it was the perfect chance to ask one simple question: What’s the single most important grilling tip every backyard cook should know?
We expected six different answers. Instead, we got six versions of the same one.
You don’t need fancy equipment or expensive meat for better barbecue at home. It all comes down to your technique. Here, learn the most important grilling tip six top pitmasters all swear by, plus other tricks of the trade for the best barbecue you’ve ever eaten.
Our Panel of Experts
courtesy Sam Berger
We spoke with six accomplished barbecue professionals representing restaurants, competition teams and the beef industry. While each person brings a different perspective to the smoker, they all share decades of experience cooking, judging, competing and teaching the craft of barbecue.
Lewis Donald is the owner of Sweet Lew’s BBQ in Charlotte, North Carolina. Donald is a featured pitmaster and co-founder of the Carolina BBQ Festival, and was recently recognized by Southern Living as one of barbecue’s “Next Legends.” He’s known for his Carolina-style barbecue and thoughtful, technique-first approach to live-fire cooking. Ken Hess is the owner of County Smoak in Lynchburg, Virginia. Hess is an award-winning pitmaster and prize winner at this year’s Carolina BBQ Festival. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Hess is known for combining chef-driven precision with old-school barbecue techniques at County Smoak, which is one of Virginia’s top barbecue destinations. Michael Letchworth is the co-owner of Sam Jones BBQ in Greenville and Raleigh, North Carolina, and the owner of Fox Hollow Outdoors. A returning pitmaster and award winner at this year’s Carolina BBQ Festival, Letchworth has spent years cooking professionally while sharing his passion for barbecue, hunting and the outdoors through Fox Hollow Outdoors. Letchworth is known for Carolina-style whole hog barbecue. Bryan Schaaf is the relationship manager at Certified Angus Beef. A self-described “hamburger historian, meat nerd and occasional cook,” Schaaf works with chefs and consumers across the country to educate them about beef quality, grading and preparation. Geoff Noth is pitmaster and “smoke whisperer” for the Big Bad Wolves BBQ team in Chicago. Noth is an award-winning pitmaster who’s earned accolades on the competitive barbecue circuit and believes mastering internal meat temperature is one of the keys to consistently great barbecue. Dave Farrell is the captain of the award-winning Big Bad Wolves BBQ team. A longtime barbecue competitor, Farrell is known for his technical approach to smoking meat, emphasizing temperature management, proper resting and consistency. Farrell is an advocate of injecting meat with melted butter or marinade prior to smoking.The Most Important Grilling Tip, According to Pitmasters
Courtesy Rich Tennent
Not one pitmaster started by talking about a secret rub. Nobody insisted we needed a more expensive smoker. Surprisingly, nobody’s first answer involved premium Wagyu brisket, a particular type of wood or some closely guarded family recipe.
They all came back to one simple piece of advice: Let your meat rest.
What surprised us wasn’t that resting matters. Any experienced pitmaster or barbecue enthusiast knows that. Rather, it was how quickly every conversation circled back to it. Whether we were talking with an award-winning restaurant owner, a championship competition cook or a Certified Angus Beef representative, each treated the rest period after the cook as one of the most important steps in the entire barbecue process.
“It’s the most important disciplined step” of the entire cook, claims Lewis Donald, the owner of Sweet Lew’s BBQ in Charlotte. “If you don’t rest your meats properly and cut into them early, than you lose all your hard work—the juices run [out] and it’s dry.”
Dave Farrell, award-winning pitmaster and captain of the Big Bad Wolves BBQ Team, explains it in practical terms. During the rest, “the meat’s muscle fibers loosen while resting, and the juices redistribute more evenly throughout the meat,” producing a bite that is noticeably juicier and more flavorful.
Exactly how long that rest should last depends on what’s coming off the smoker.
Chicken may only need 10 to 20 minutes to rest. Ribs often benefit from about half an hour. Pork shoulder can happily rest for a couple hours, while brisket is in a league of its own, with many pitmasters letting it rest for several hours to overnight before slicing into it.
We get that it’s hard to wait. After all, you may spend hours waiting for your barbecue to finish, and once it’s finally done, the temptation to dive in is almost irresistible.
Michael Letchworth has watched that mistake play out more times than he can count. According to Letchworth, the owner of Sam Jones BBQ and founder of Fox Hollow Outdoors, the biggest problem isn’t that people don’t know about the rest—it’s that they don’t allow enough time for it.
You may plan dinner for 6 p.m., work backward from there and assume the brisket will cooperate. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Cooks stall. Fires fluctuate. Weather changes. Suddenly, dinner is 45 minutes away, the meat isn’t quite ready and panic starts setting in.
That’s when people crank up the heat, pull the meat too early or skip the resting period entirely. Letchworth’s solution is refreshingly simple: Finish early. “Give yourself plenty of time, and don’t be afraid to get done way ahead of time, and then hold and rest that product until you’re actually ready to serve it.”
Barbecue holds remarkably well when wrapped properly and kept warm. In fact, many pitmasters believe a long, controlled rest actually improves the finished product. “A [barbecue] restaurant isn’t cooking food that comes off the smoker and goes straight to the plate,” Letchworth says. “Our meats at the restaurant get a long rest as part of the process, but cooking at your home is different. You need to intentionally plan for a rest period.”
Ken Hess, owner of County Smoak and another standout at this year’s Carolina BBQ Festival, sees it exactly the same way. When home cooks ask for advice, he encourages them to build the resting period into their timeline instead of treating it as optional. Plan backward from serving time. Expect the unexpected. Give yourself a cushion.
“It’s always better to be waiting on your guests than watching your meat,” Hess says. “We’ll wrap and rest pork butts and brisket for probably 12 hours overnight before we start chopping the next day, and that’s just going to help all that bark soften up and all of the juices redistribute throughout the meat.”
Every pitmaster we spoke with essentially said the same thing: Resting isn’t something you do after the cook. It’s part of the cook.
Related: The Brazilian Way To Make Steak 10x Better
More Grilling Tips for the Best Barbecue
courtesy Rich Tennent and Let's Meet CLT
While resting meat was the clear consensus, unsurprisingly every pitmaster had more tricks up their sleeve. Each shared techniques, habits and lessons earned over years behind the smoker. Some reinforced practical ideas, while others were totally surprising.
1. Trust your thermometer—not your clock.
courtesy Rich Tennent and Let's Meet CLT
If resting meat was the biggest consensus, internal temperature wasn’t far behind.
Geoff Noth doesn’t mince words on the subject. The award-winning smoke master with team Big Bad Wolves BBQ believes internal meat temperature is every bit as important as the rest itself. After all, if the meat isn’t cooked properly in the first place, no amount of resting is going to save it. Not going by the thermometer “was probably my biggest mistake in my younger days,” he says.
Each pitmaster echoed the same advice: stop cooking by the clock. Every brisket is different. Every pork shoulder has its own timetable. Weather changes. Smokers fluctuate. That’s why the number that matters most isn’t the one on your watch—it’s the one on your thermometer.
Hess even recommends skipping expensive gadgets in favor of a dependable instant-read thermometer. In his experience, a reasonably priced model in the hands of someone who knows how to use it is far more valuable than a drawer full of fancy gear.
2. Master the cook before buying better meat.
One of the few topics that produced slightly different answers was the age-old question of whether better barbecue starts with better meat.
Bryan Schaaf, relationship manager at Certified Angus Beef, which was one of the sponsors at this year’s Carolina BBQ Festival, believes quality ingredients give every pitmaster a head start. According to Schaaf, “start with a higher marbled raw product for the best results.”
While Schaaf isn’t wrong, Michael Letchworth offers an important reality check for backyard cooks. Before dropping serious money on Prime or Wagyu brisket, he recommends mastering the fundamentals. Learn how your smoker behaves. Understand how long different cuts actually take. Invest in a quality instant-read thermometer. Once you can consistently turn out a great product, then reward yourself with premium beef.
In other words, don’t use a $200 brisket as your practice run.
Lewis Donald agrees. People buy an expensive cut for a birthday party or family gathering, then attempt their first overnight brisket cook with a backyard full of hungry guests waiting. His advice? Practice first. A few inexpensive cooks spent getting to know your equipment and “learning fire management; learning personal threshold…will be better money spent,” he says.
3. Borrow a trick from Texas.
Trevor Srednick / Getty Images
Ken Hess shared a tip he learned from Texas’s legendary pitmaster, Wayne Mueller of James Beard-recognized Louis Mueller Barbecue, that he still uses today, and it involves cardboard.
Before placing meat on the smoker, especially brisket, Mueller sets it on a piece of clean, unprinted cardboard.
While this may sound ridiculous, the science makes perfect sense. The cardboard acts as a temporary heat shield beneath, particularly under the thinner flat portion of the brisket, helping to prevent it from cooking faster than the thicker point. As the brisket slowly shrinks during the cook, air begins circulating around the meat, allowing smoke to reach every surface while still reducing direct heat from below.
Hess says it’s one of those old-school tricks that’s easy to dismiss—right up until you see it work.
One important caveat: this technique should only be done with clean, unprinted, unwaxed cardboard that’s safe for food contact.
4. Skip the overnight rib seasoning.
Philippe Gerber / Getty Images
Another unexpected tip was to avoid applying your rub the night before the cook—particularly with ribs. While this advice is at odds with a lot of advice you’ll find on social media, Hess says ribs are the exception to the dry brine process.
According to Hess, leaving a salty, sugary seasoning on ribs overnight, especially the amounts contained in many commercial rubs, can begin curing the meat rather than simply seasoning it. “Because [of] the thinness of ribs, the sugar and salt left on overnight will penetrate that inch, inch and a half of meat,” he says. The result is a change in both texture and the finished flavor. “You [may] end up having a rib that tastes more like a cured piece of ham,” Hess jokes.
Instead, he recommends applying the rub no more than a couple of hours before the ribs go on the smoker, allowing the seasoning to do its job without giving it the time to cure. It’s a small adjustment, but exactly the kind of insider advice you only pick up after years of experimentation.
The Final Takeaway for Making Better Barbecue at Home
courtesy Sam Berger and Let's Meet CLT
Great barbecue rewards patience. Many backyard cooks get into trouble when they try to make barbecue fit their schedule instead of letting the barbecue dictate its own.
Maybe that’s what separates good barbecue from great barbecue. Not a secret rub. Not a six-figure smoker. Not even a championship recipe.
Have the patience to trust the process. Because when it comes to barbecue, you can always wait a little longer to eat, but you can’t uncut a brisket.
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